Since Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s debate debacle last week, commentators and conservatives alike have been questioning his readiness and looking for another presidential alternative to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Now, Colorado’s Tom Tancredo is piling on.

In a column for the Daily Caller, Tancredo, who ran twice for his party’s presidential nomination in an effort to inject the illegal immigration issue into the larger debate, is slamming Perry for his soft policies on illegal immigration in Texas – and what Tancredo calls his “Muslim blind spot.”

“What is not yet as widely known about Perry is that he extends his taxpayer-funded compassion not only to illegal aliens but also to Muslim groups seeking to whitewash the violent history of that religion,” Tancredo writes. ”Perry endorsed and facilitated the adoption in Texas public schools of a pro-Muslim curriculum unit developed by Muslim clerics in Pakistan.”

Tancredo cites a study by The Center for Immigration Studies, which shows that 81% of the 279,000 jobs created in Texas in the past four years went to non-citizens, a high number of them illegal aliens, to discredit Perry’s central presidential argument – that he’s overseen a “Texas miracle” of job growth while the national economy continues to decline.

And in 2008, as Tancredo points out, Perry helped expand the Muslim Histories and Culture Project, a teacher-training program spearheaded by Texas Ismailis that introduces Islamic history and culture curricula into Texas schools.

While many of the GOP’s 2012 contenders have sought to distance themselves with Islam, Perry, Tancredo points out, refused to endorse a proposal in the Texas legislature to outlaw Sharia law in the state.

“What is it with Republican elites like Perry?” Tancredo writes. “Do they think Republican primary voters are stupid? Does Perry think he can talk tough in defending the Texas death penalty and then waffle on border security and taxpayer support for illegal alien children? Why does he think he can claim to be the ‘tea party candidate’ while endorsing a whitewash of Islamic extremism in Texas schools?”

Loons come in many shapes and sizes but you can usually identify them because they utter stark raving mad things that normal mainstream people would never say and would likely find objectionable. One of those things that might make you flinch is when someone calls for the application of nuclear weapons upon a whole populace or nation.

In a previous post I exposedJoe Kaufman’s wish to launch nukes onto the Middle East, and how he wonders ” if we got nukes, why aren’t we using them?” This is not an isolated incident but in fact is part of a larger trend that links many of the Islamophobes and instigators of anti-Muslim agitation.

In the recent presidential race, former Republican RepresentativeTom Tancredo from Colorado was on the record stating,

If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina. Because that’s the only thing I can think of that might deter somebody from doing what they otherwise might do.

Does Tancredo believe that instead of emboldening terrorists and pouring fuel on the fires of conflict, a strike on the holy places of a quarter of the world’s population would be a “deterrence?” Can someone from Colorado talk to Tancredo and convince him to go on the same quest as the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz?

Robert Spencer, the self-described “Islamic expert” wrote in his article Nuke Mecca? Nope that he believes the only reason bombing Mecca wouldn’t be a good idea is because it would become

[a] source of spirit, not of dispirit. The jihadists would have yet another injury to add to their litany of grievances.

Why can’t Spencer who easily proclaims that bombing Mecca is wrong for strategic reasons not come out and denounce the idea of bombing close to a quarter of humanity’s most holiest site for moral reasons? Maybe because Spencer wouldn’t mind seeing Mecca bombed.

He grudgingly suggests that due to the exigencies of Realpolitik we can’t do it because it will become a source of “spirit for the Jihadists” but without condemning it he leaves the possibility that we might be capable of doing it in the future. He never stops to consider that this might anger more than just the Jihadists but also every single Muslim in the world.

One must ask Spencer how he would feel if someone proposed that the only reason bombing the Vatican might not be a good idea is because it will become a source of spirit for extremist Catholics? Wouldn’t he think that Catholics of all stripes and shades would be angered and not just the extremists targeted amongst them?

Michael Savage

In one of the most recent episodes of using the nuclear card we have Michael Savage echoing Kaufman by asking on his radio show the Savage Nation, “if we got nukes, why aren’t we using them, what are they good for?”

CALLER: We in the Western world and the United States — I don’t see how we’re gonna win this, because we do not have the guts, we don’t have the stomach to do the things it takes to be violent enough, to fight fire with fire and give these — I mean, basically, we need to exterminate them like rats, and we’re so worried about —

SAVAGE: Yeah, we know where they’re coming from, we know they’re coming out of the — the training, at least, is probably coming out of the area where Osama bin Laden is hiding. If we can believe our intelligence agencies — of course, we have no real knowledge as to whether they’re really intelligent intelligence agencies — they’re in the tribal areas of western Pakistan. What the heck do we have nuclear weapons for? What are tactical nuclear weapons for but to wipe out an enemy? The enemy lives there — kill them and their families, and show them that the terror they inflict on the West will come home to roost and will be inflicted on them. Why must we sit here waiting for the New York subways to go up in flames?

CALLER: Yes, sir, but what are we gonna do? Instead of what you just said, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna cut our nuclear arsenal.

[…]

SAVAGE: The only way to defend ourselves against these fanatic Islamists is with strength. Not with hand-wringing, not with the United Nations, but with a strong and swift attack on the tribal regions of western Pakistan. Now, I will not quibble with you as to whether they should be with nuclear — that is, tactical nuclear weapons, which are limited in their scope and limited in their power — or with cluster bombs or with weapons I’m not even aware of. But there’s no question that entire region needs to be annihilated and stripped off the earth.

Such statements are the logical end of the extremist thought of the anti-Muslim crowd and one wonders considering the evidence how prevalent this apocalyptic call is amongst those who think nuking countries, regions and holy places is a swell idea.